Nanosolar

I saw this political cartoon and it shows this elderly BIG OIL man sitting at a desk contemplating the oil crisis and the over 100 dollars per barrel cost and we see the above.

I just read where a company out in California has devised a means of producing thin film photovoltaic cells that can be mass produced at about a price of 30 cents per watt. Market cost would work out to around 90 cents per watt. Now, if you were to use those thin film cells in CT, you could first get a grant to purchase those cells and get rebated 45 of the 90 cents. On top of that, there is another grant program where you get 50 cents per watt produced. Works out that you could get paid 5 cents per watt to use solar panels on your commercial building, and in CT this means any multifamily dwelling of more than four units. That means, you could essentially get your electrical needs taken care of and get paid if you wanted to build an apartment building, a housing project, a mixed use building, an office building, anything. I don't know what your idea of feasibility is, but having the government pay you for energy sounds pretty damned feasible to me.

Instead our government wants us to use oil. Send young men off to die in a war that makes no sense and was started on the basis of a grotesque lie. At this point, government has gone from bad to worse to worst to flat out absurd. If voters refuse to take action and to allow their finances, their kids lives, and their very planet to simply go up in smoke due to the greed of old, White men in power, and yet voters elect to do nothing about it, one can only assume voters judge themselves to be unworthy of any form of health, happiness, and well being, and that, my friends, is some sad business right there.

Lecture Series/ Kroon Building

Last Thursday I began attending a lecture series at Yale in the School of Forrestry and Environmental Science. It was strange, returning to where I spent four years of my life over twenty-five years ago. Funny thing about it is, when I was an undergraduate, I never stepped foot in that building, or for that matter did I venture into that part of the university altogether. Science hill is the area of the university where the math, science folks went, and I was an artsy, writing guy.

So we drove up to Science Hill, got out of the car and headed into the F&ES building. Harassed only one person for directions, and we entered Bowers Auditorium, where, oddly enough, it reminded me of being in a lecture hall in college. The only differences were 1) there were refreshments in the back, and 2) after grabbing a cup of coffee, I sat towards the front because I was actually interested in being there.

The lecturer was Gus Speth, the Dean of the F&ES. His introducer went through the many incredible things Speth has done in his career, then ta-da, Speth stepped up to the podium, and to be totally honest about it, gave a pretty mediocre lecture. Not to say he's a bad lecturer, but the topic was pretty dull. It was about the multiple administrative difficulties he faced over the previous 5 years getting the University to capitulate to the building of the new Krune building, and on the gloriousness of the plan for the building.

I learned a lot about the resistance to new ideas during the lecture even within a supposed bastion for new ideas. Speth seemingly engaged in the academic form of open warfare with the temporary provost of the University for a multi-year stretch. After finally outlasting the temp, he actually got what he wanted, which was to have the university agree to get rid of the Pierson-Sage power plant, virtually an energy dinosaur, which of course, sat adjacent to where the Krune building is to be built.

Throughout the lecture there were several references to the environmentally ground-breaking nature of the building and how those element will provide leadership for the rest of the university and the community at large to move toward a "greener" future. And I sat there and thought about it for a long time, and I realized this is exactly what is wrong with universities and right with them at the same time.

Let's tackle what's right first. The Kroon building is a brilliant building. Brilliant design, brilliant lighting, floor plan, usage of renewable energy sources. All that good stuff. Further, it is in some respects a beacon, a lighthouse offering direction through the fog of grants and red tape and construction costs and varying reports on the virtues of different forms of fuels and energy and passive solar design and fuel cells... on and on and on. Further, in one sense it cost the university nothing. Yale told Speth, "Go ahead, but you have to raise the money," and Speth did, got costs broken down, got estimates, hired architects, designers, construction teams, and tallied it all up and then went out to find private donations. Got donations, and hence, the name "Kroon." (I guess that is better than say the Southwest Airlines Arena, but not much.) Further, went after the power plant, fought the good fight, threatened "the power plant or me!" The power plant had to go. Well done.

But let us talk about leadership for a moment. What does it mean to be a leader? I wonder about that because for the first time, I saw my alma mater as the ivory tower I am sure it always was, but I guess I was too self-absorbed or inebriated to know it. As I look at the design for the Kroon building, I realize that it is unrealistic for anybody but a Yale, or Harvard, or University of Texas, or the Brookings Institute, or Bill Gates to consider building a building like the Kroon building. The cost per square foot must be nearly a thousand dollars, whereas I am a principal in a company that aspires to create green homes for under a hundred dollars a square foot. Now, if you are playing follow the leader, yeh, the Harvard might follow the Oberlin who might follow the Brown who might follow the Sacremento Museum of Fine Art (I'm just pulling these names off the top of my head and they have no correlation to reality other than I know these places exist.) But when you are talking about global warming, what you are shooting for is the entire human population, particularly virulent polluters like the US, to change its behavior. Walking around in a library that uses solar energy is not going to make you wander home and cry out to the misses, "Hey, honey, we need to throw some solar panels on top of this sucker." But I think if someone is buiding a new house and you, as a builder say, "Hey, you know what? I can build your house pretty cheap and still do your electric system solar, cut your bills way down near nothing, and it will be just the house you want. Cost you less than Joe Blow was going to charge." Now that will get people changing. Cheaper, better, greener?

I am not saying Yale is not doing a good thing by building the ultimate green building. But who is going to follow? The question is already out there: how do we face the impending global warming crisis? Al Gore got it out there, and I'm sorry to say, he went to Harvard. But the point is, Yale, we know already. Green is good. Now how do we bring everybody to the table? Making a spaceship modern building, cool and all, but 7, 8, 9 hundred dollars a square foot just is not dealing with the real world.